You're at the end of the Experiment! Go back to the poem you've liked the most out of the poems you've read, and print that out for Thursday's class.
On Thursday, you will spend the first half of class preparing to present on the poem you've chosen. As part of the presentation, you will be discussing its distinctive features, so take a minute to compare it to the other poems that you didn't like as much: what differences in form or content set this poem apart for you?
If there are any words you don't know in this poem, be sure to look them up before Thursday's class, and be prepared to paraphrase the meaning of the poem.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Harryette Mullen, "Kirstenography"
Kirstenography
K was burn at the bend of the ear in the mouth of remember. She
was the fecund chill burn in her famish. She came into the word
with a putty smoother, a handsewn farther, and a yodeler cistern.
They were all to gather in a rosy horse on a piety sweet in Alligator Panorama.
When her smoother and farther wrought her chrome from the
hose spittle, her cistern fought the piddle ably was a girly heeded
bawl. A bawl that dank silk, booed, burgled, rabbled, fried, and
tweed in wipers. This was not a bawl that swept in the joy blocks
with her rather joys. This was a giving bawl that wasn't a joy like
fluffed fan mail. Oh no! This was her grand blue piddle cistern that
cold knot talc for a song time, but lonely fried and braid rather
voices that the yodeler one cold knot rubberband.
It shook a few ears until the cold talc to gather, tall yolks,
shear sacreds, heave a conversion or a dish cushion. That was
laughter they kissed their handsewn farther who wind sway to
Cheap Cargo, Ill Annoy. Mum and gulls made their mauve to
Foreword Text. As swoon as they cold they boasted fetters in the
snail to him and he relied as mulch as he cold.
Their inelegant smoother was a reacher who muddied lard,
learned debris, and wept them upon the prosper pat. Reaching them
fright from strong was her per rental doodly. They threw up and
wind soft to mercy rule and hinder guardian, then on to
sedimentary, fecund dairy, and slide rule. They were wood in all
those paces, and waded to knowledge at Cutie Ostentatious.
The smoother and her dodders all learned debris to gather.
Evidentially, two quirked as proofs in the loony varsity. K was
quirking for the slate of Taxes Hysterical Remission. Laughter a
schmaltz fart with a wanky lurk, K fond her Sanity. A proof of
reckoned comics. K quirked to learn her nastier debris and later she
rave burps and becalmed herself a smoother.
Now she does her writhing ghostly a tome. Quirks at the muse,
um, that's in Chapped Apple Milling Sea. Enduring, she has her
sanity and they becalmed the prod parentheses of Adenoid and
Williwaw. They all loved shapely over laughter.
Harryette Mullen
I love this.
This is insanity.
e.e. cummings, "my sweet old etcetera"
my sweet old etcetera
my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent
war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
for,
my sister
Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that
i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my
self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et
cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
e.e. cummings
Yes!
No.
Maybe?
my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent
war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
for,
my sister
Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that
i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my
self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et
cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
e.e. cummings
Yes!
No.
Maybe?
Walter de la Mare, "The Listeners"
| The Listeners "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grass Of the forest's ferny floor; And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller's head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; "Is there anybody there?" he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:-- "Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word," he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. |
Walter de la Mare
Great!
Nope.
William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow"
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams
Keep going!
I'm not so sure.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams
Keep going!
I'm not so sure.
Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man"
I Know a Man
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,—John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
William Blake, "The Sick Rose"
The Sick Rose
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake
I like this more than I liked the Tennyson.
Tennyson was better.
William Blake
I like this more than I liked the Tennyson.
Tennyson was better.
Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
Mary Oliver, "The Journey"
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
Yes, I would like more poems like this.
No, I think we're moving in the wrong direction here.
Robert Desnos, "Last Poem"
Last Poem
I have so fiercely dreamed of you
And walked so far and spoken of you so,
Loved a shade of you so hard
That now I've no more left of you.
I'm left to be a shade among shades
A hundred times more shade than shade
To be shade cast time and time again into your sun-transfigured life.
Translated from the French by X. J. Kennedy.
Yes, keep going!
I feel like we've taken a wrong turn.
I have so fiercely dreamed of you
And walked so far and spoken of you so,
Loved a shade of you so hard
That now I've no more left of you.
I'm left to be a shade among shades
A hundred times more shade than shade
To be shade cast time and time again into your sun-transfigured life.
Translated from the French by X. J. Kennedy.
Yes, keep going!
I feel like we've taken a wrong turn.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If you liked this poem better than Bishop's, read this.
If you preferred Bishop's poem, try this.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If you liked this poem better than Bishop's, read this.
If you preferred Bishop's poem, try this.
Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
Okay, now read this.
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
Okay, now read this.
Pablo Neruda, "Barcarole"
Barcarole
If only you would touch my heart,
if only you were to put your mouth to my heart,
your delicate mouth, your teeth,
if you were to put your tongue like a red arrow
there where my dusty heart is beating,
if you were to blow on my heart near the sea, weeping,
it would make a dark noise, like the drowsy sound of
train wheels,
like the indecision of waters,
like autumn in full leaf,
like blood,
with a noise of damp flames burning the sky,
with a sound like dreams or branches or the rain,
or foghorns in some dismal port,
if you were to blow your heart near the sea,
like a white ghost,
in the spume of the wave,
in the middle of the wind,
like a ghost unleashed, at the seashore, weeping.
Like a long absence, like a sudden bell,if only you were to put your mouth to my heart,
your delicate mouth, your teeth,
if you were to put your tongue like a red arrow
there where my dusty heart is beating,
if you were to blow on my heart near the sea, weeping,
it would make a dark noise, like the drowsy sound of
train wheels,
like the indecision of waters,
like autumn in full leaf,
like blood,
with a noise of damp flames burning the sky,
with a sound like dreams or branches or the rain,
or foghorns in some dismal port,
if you were to blow your heart near the sea,
like a white ghost,
in the spume of the wave,
in the middle of the wind,
like a ghost unleashed, at the seashore, weeping.
the sea doles out the sound of the heart,
raining, darkening at sundown, on a lonely coast:
no question that night falls
and its mournful blue of the flags of shipwrecks
peoples itself with planets of throaty silver.
And the heart sounds like a sour conch
calls, oh sea, oh lament, oh molten panic,
scattered in the unlucky and disheveled waves:
The sea reports sonorously
on its languid shadows, its green poppies.
if you existed, suddenly, on a mournful coast,
surrounded by the dead day,
facing into a new night,
filled with waves,
and if you were to blow on my cold and frightened heart,
if you were to blow on the lonely blood of my heart,
if you were to blow on its motion of doves in flame,
its black syllables of blood would ring out,
its incessant red waters would come to flood,
and it would ring out with shadows,
ring out like death,
cry out like a tube filled with wind or weeping,
like a shaken bottle spurting fear.
so that's how it is, and the lightning would glint in your
braids
and the rain would come in through your open eyes
to ready the weeping you shut up dumbly
and the black wings of the sea would wheel round you,
with its great talons and its rush and its cawing.
braids
and the rain would come in through your open eyes
to ready the weeping you shut up dumbly
and the black wings of the sea would wheel round you,
with its great talons and its rush and its cawing.
Do you want to be the solitary ghost blowing, by the sea its sad instrument?
If only you would call,
a long sound, a bewitching whistle,
a sequence of wounded waves,
maybe some one would come,
from the peaks of the islands, from the red depths of the
sea,
some one would come, someone would come.
If only you would call,
a long sound, a bewitching whistle,
a sequence of wounded waves,
maybe some one would come,
from the peaks of the islands, from the red depths of the
sea,
some one would come, someone would come.
Someone would come, blow fiercely,
so that it sounds like a siren of some battered ship,
like lamentation,
like neighing in the midst of the foam an blood,
like a ferocious water gnashing and sounding.
so that it sounds like a siren of some battered ship,
like lamentation,
like neighing in the midst of the foam an blood,
like a ferocious water gnashing and sounding.
In the marine season
its conch of shadow spirals like a shout,
the seabirds ignore it and fly off,
its roll call of sounds, its mournful rings
rise on the shores of the lonely sea.
its conch of shadow spirals like a shout,
the seabirds ignore it and fly off,
its roll call of sounds, its mournful rings
rise on the shores of the lonely sea.
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